Back in February, I reviewed all the book-oriented social networks I could find and concluded that what I really wanted was a more personalized version of Google Books. The rich related content with which Google surrounds many books is what makes it so valuable. Compare the book information pages for A History of Underground Comics (for example) side-by-side Mahalo-style on Google Books, LibraryThing and Shelfari.
Today Google Books launched My Library, effectively ending my whining.
Now LibraryThing has a lot of great features and is rolling out new ones constantly—and when it comes to socializing around books, LT and Shelfari are apparently where it’s at—but the one thing none of these bookish social networks offer is full-text search of the books in your collection. Google’s got that and suddenly, for the first time, I’m thinking it might actually be worthwhile to start cataloging my books online. Put in a little entry time and you’ll be able to search the contents of your entire book collection in under a second. They call that a value proposition.
Only problem now is most of the books I’ve been reading lately were published before 1930 by obscure publishing concerns and are as impossible to find in Google Book Search as they are in the real world. But Google’s new embeddable public-domain book-clipping feature pretty much makes up for that.
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I have to agree, Google Books has by far the most robust book info.
So, we all know my limited enthusiasm for socializing around my books from previous snarky comments on your bookish social networking sites (summary: Only slightly more meaningful than socializing around one’s button collection, if one collected buttons. Why not actually read a book instead?).
But if My Library offers no socialization features, how much value are you really getting for the effort of cataloging your entire library?
In other words, why is searching your own library preferable to searching the entire library of Google Books? If I’m looking for a quote that’s on the tip of my tongue or a great idea I read a few years back, a) I probably know enough of the surrounding key words to make a limiting query, and b) I’d rather have all available books for my search in case I forgot to catalog the one I’m thinking of.
So what is the added value here? I know I’ve gotta be missing something. I feel like I should be totally psyched about this, but I’m not sure why.
Instant searchability of your books allows you to get more out of the books you own. I’ve accumulated a lot of books that I haven’t read cover to cover but that I know are valuable. If I can query them in the myriad ways I query the web all day, I think I can get more out of them. Because when you find yourself on an interesting book page on Google Book Search, you don’t get to keep reading the rest of the book online. You get a few pages for context in most cases. If you’re searching books you own, Google Book Search becomes more of a jumping-off point, enabling further discovery of the books you were smart enough to pick up.
For book accumulators with short attention spans and limited patience, that’s some real added value. Bookshelves that have accumulated dust while you were at your computer reading about books come back to life!
Google’s book information pages also enable discovery of related books better than the social networks, in my experience. And if you want to show off your Google library you’re welcome to post a link and RSS badge on the world wide web.
PS: As I add books to my library on Google I’m realizing that full-text search is not very useful if you don’t have the books on hand, because in many cases you get only a fragment of a sentence for context and a page number. Googling books nearby is powerful.
Alright, Google Library Promoter Man. I’m gonna check it out, for sure.
But I still maintain (pre- playing with this myself) that you can just as easily use Google Book Search on your library *without* cataloging it, thanks to Advanced Book Search.
And that they need to add covers to their RSS feed before they get all of my praise. You, of all people, should totally get behind that idea!
To Lauren — Google Books can be an extension of your blog if you post on a particular topic. My blog will link to my library, and as I add reviews, I’ll post a notice with the new titles.
Thanks for mentioning Shelfari (even if it’s just a little mention at the end of a post).
At any rate, we just launched a new blog widget at http://www.shelfari.com/widget
Try it out and let me know what you think.
–Dave
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[...] Google Book Search until their embeddable book clippings started breaking and I realized their full-text search only covers a small percentage of the books I’m interested in [...]